about
our history
Art Division was founded in 2010 by artist and educator Dan McCleary. While serving as Director of Art Programs at Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), Dan witnessed a recurring gap: his most talented and dedicated students, upon turning 18, lost access to community-based arts programs entirely. There was no next step — no bridge between youth arts education and a professional creative life.
Art Division was built to be that bridge.
We earned our 501(c)3 nonprofit status in January 2011 and established a permanent campus in the Rampart District of Los Angeles, where we've operated ever since. Today, our campus includes dedicated painting and printmaking studios, a professional-grade art library, and a public gallery — all staffed by an enthusiastic team of educators and supported by working professional artists who volunteer their time as guest lecturers and open their studios to our students.
Over the past 15 years, Art Division has served more than 900 unique young artists from across Los Angeles County, helping them build the skills, portfolios, and confidence to pursue four-year college programs and sustainable careers in the visual arts
art division library
At the center of our site sits one of the most distinctive resources in Los Angeles arts education: the Art Division Library. Housing more than 10,000 carefully curated books and materials — spanning painting, printmaking, architecture, design, photography, art history, and allied disciplines — the library has been built over more than a decade to serve as both a research tool and a source of daily inspiration.
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The library is more than a collection. It's the intellectual heart of Art Division. Workshops including Art History, and college and career coaching take place here alongside lectures, film screenings, and independent study. It's a space where students can slow down, research deeply, and find the visual language they're looking for.
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Open to all enrolled students, the library is designed to be a safe, quiet, and creatively rich environment — a counterpart to the hands-on energy of our studios.
Sam Francis print studio
at art division
Students in our printmaking program develop foundational and advanced skills across a range of traditional techniques — from relief printing including linoleum and woodblock to intaglio methods such as drypoint etching. Working with real tools and real materials in a professional studio environment, students learn not just the technical craft of printmaking, but the discipline, patience, and creative problem-solving that define a working artist's practice.
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Printmaking at Art Division is offered as a core course and has been a cornerstone of our programming since our founding.
paint studio and media lab
Our painting studio and media lab give students the space to develop a personal visual practice across both traditional and contemporary disciplines. In the painting studio, students work in oils, acrylics, and mixed media under the guidance of working professional artists, building foundational skills in color theory, composition, and observational drawing alongside more conceptual and expressive approaches.
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The adjacent media lab expands that practice into digital territory — giving students access to tools and training in graphic design, digital imaging, and film arts. These disciplines reflect the reality of today's creative economy, where visual artists often need fluency across multiple platforms and formats.
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Together, the paint studio and media lab form the core of Art Division's studio arts programming — a space where students discover what kind of artists they want to be, and begin building the body of work to prove it.
6th St. Gallery
Located at our campus on W. 6th Street in the Rampart District, the Art Division Gallery has been a space for emerging artists to show their work publicly since 2010. The gallery exhibits original work by Art Division students alongside curated shows from local professional artists — creating a direct dialogue between the community we serve and the broader Los Angeles art world.
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For many of our students, a show at the 6th St. Gallery is their first time exhibiting work professionally. That experience — hanging work, speaking to visitors, receiving critical response — is as much a part of their education as anything that happens in the studio.
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The gallery is free and open to the public, by appointment only and serves as a living demonstration of what becomes possible when young artists are given the space, support, and resources to create.